Debts that cannot be repaid in full ~ Malinda Words

A friend joked recently that there was a time when friends and relatives would ask ‘aren’t you thinking about being married?’ but now they ask ‘haven’t you thought about migrating?’ Clearly times have changed from relatively bearable to hard and worse. Understandable too.

If things are unbearable, there are two options. One, do your best to make things bearable. If this cannot be done alone, then seek like-minded people, network, build a community, turn idea into ideology. Fight. That’s if ‘this place,’ however you define it, is considered to be of value.

That’s not easy when one’s mind has been and is constantly bombarded with negativity about the country, the culture and history even as it is injected with all kinds of fairy stories about some other place.

So there’s the second option: leaving. Decide to leave and you can support the decision with countless arguments. In other words, once you’ve convinced yourself about a decision or a course of action, it’s easy to convince the world, especially because even if the world objects, you’ve justified things to yourself.

Nothing wrong with this.

Recently I met a school friend, Esala Hettiwatte. He spoke about these matters.

‘I have told my children, “go wherever you want to go, but remember that there’s no land like this.’

Now someone could argue that it’s a place-bias born of long years of residence. ‘There’s no place like home,’ after all it is not a country-specific assertion.

I get him though. When people ask me why I returned to Sri Lanka (and many have, over the years), I’ve told them, ‘there are two reasons: first, I am a beneficiary of free education and that’s a debt I cannot every hope to repay in full, and secondly I can’t think of a country more beautiful or a people more enchanting than this.’

It’s not just free education though. Just think. The vast majority of Sri Lankans benefit from free education and free health services including complicated surgeries which would cost a fortune if done in a private hospital. They benefit from all kinds of subsidies. Much of it can be calculated but we don’t add it up to overall income. Someone paid for someone’s education. That beneficiary is not asked to repay that someone. Indeed most beneficiaries aren’t even conscious that these can be seen as debts and that the civilised thing to do is to repay in one form or another.

So, being ignorant or feigning ignorance allows us to absolve ourselves from any guilt. Indeed, no one will say ‘hey dude, pay your debts before you leave!’ I am not saying that either, don’t worry. One doesn’t have to be resident in a village, a community, a household or country to serve the relevant place or people. And there’s no deadline either. If you do feel obliged to repay, you can do it as you wish, when you wish.

Esala was not talking of any of these things. He feels blessed to have been born here. He feels blessed to live here, despite all the deprivations. I feel the same way.

The beauty needs no description. All you need to have done to love this country is to have traveled. It’s a small island. Easy to cover, so to speak. Easy to discover and rediscover. It’s more than that.

There was a sitcom that was very popular in the USA a few decades ago titled ‘Cheers’. The theme song had a line that was almost an ad: ‘where everybody knows your name.’ Familiarity. That’s what was special and was being marketed.

In Sri Lanka, any conversation of any length has the potential of producing life-long friendships. Talk to a stranger for a few minutes and you’ll probably find that the person is related or knows someone you know or there are places both have been to or things both are fascinated by.

Maybe it is the size of the country. Maybe it is the culture. Maybe it is just Esala. Maybe just Esala and myself. But maybe there’s some truth in the Victor Ratnayake song, ‘Okkoma rajavaru (all kings)’ where he claims, ‘we are all fathers, we are all mothers, we of the Thun Sinhale are all related.’

Yes, people have issues with ‘Sinhale’ thanks to those extremists who have misread the name and are convinced that it confers exclusive ownership to a particular group identifying itself with a particular language and thanks to those who have different fixations about self and community. Sinhale, though, is a composite of the Yaksha, Naga, Deva and Raksha, the four hela communities. And 'Thun Sinhale' refers to the island’s geography separated into the three provinces Ruhunu, Maya and Pihiti.

That’s an aside.

We are all related. A nation of relatives. We will be there for each other, even those we dislike or consider to be enemies, in moments of triumph and moments of tragedy: we are present at the magula (celebration) and the maranaya (death).

We can never leave. We can never completely pay off the debts we owe. True for me. True for Esala too, probably. But more than that, this country is way too beautiful to leave. Some loves are like that.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

27 April 2023

Debts that cannot be repaid in full

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